Gareth Pugh has opened his first standalone store in Hong Kong in typical avent-garde fashion. The Sunderland-born designer makes his retail debut with a shop decorated in his edgy and gothic signature style that focuses on colour and textural contrasts - think shiny and matte, hard and soft, and black and white.
The 658 sq. ft store is slathered in British imported black rubber paint with matching glossy tiles lining the floor and contrasting white fittings. The changing rooms feature padded leather walls and carpets in light grey with a white light box dangling from the ceiling. The shop will also replace the traditional window display with a view to a large screen at the back of the store, which will exhibit imagery and video from Pugh's catwalk shows.
"Because it's my first store, I knew I had to do something that's very me," Pugh told WWD. "What could be more me than a black box? But instead of doing something very one-dimensional, I decided to play around with a lot of optical illusions that will change the space according to reflections."
Perhaps following on from his interactive project with photographer Nick Knight and SHOWstudio SHOP back in November 2009 (where video of Pugh at work in his studio was streamed live to the SHOWstudio website), the designer revealed that the shop screen will showcase films that he has produced, as well as art installations in the future.
He said: "I've been talking to Nick Knight, who runs a lot of live streaming on SHOWstudio, and I was thinking I can connect the screen to the internet and perhaps put a camera in my studio. Because the screen is part of the architecture of the store, we can essentially curate the wall. And when the shop is shut, it can still communicate to the audience outside."
While there are no plans to open any more stores at present, Pugh used the Hong Kong shop launch as an opportunity to finally put those rumours that he is heading to Thierry Mugler to bed.
"There is no truth to them at all," he said. "Rumours are rumours. It's not going to happen."
Picture: Gareth Pugh at the Marc Jacobs' Bang launch party at Harvey Nichols in London last month.
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